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A Chris Henrick (Peer) Interview

The specific domains Chris is interested in:

digital cartography

ethnographic information science

data visualize

critical theory

social justice

Christopher Henrick is interested in tying in critical theory around academic cartography with technology, and social justice. Specifically, he is interested in ways people are using non normative maps to convey information. For example, in Ho Chi Minh City, the way in which you navigate through the city is by temporal maps on sidewalks. Such examples incorporate cultural values to mapping cities, and answer questions that traditional academic mapping wouldn’t be able to answer with empirical data.

The motivation behind his concept and domain is due to the legacy academics and professionals have paved out for cartography . At the time, it was held as the absolute, the objective way of learning about the world. When actuality, maps always served a specific purposes, such as political motivation. And since it is a generalized depiction of the real world, some things are being left out and purposefully included. For example, when you’re looking at a map of the gulf coast, where there is an open body of water on it, and the map leaves out the mass oil infrastructures used for the extraction. Henrick is interested in teaching academics and professionals to learn about the implications of their work and unintentional consequences when they leave out such information and to learn to take precautionary measures when designing maps.

Lastly, to further establish his concept, he would like to answer the following questions:

How can the field to be made more humanistic? Do we need to move beyond cartography, and do we need to move more democratic? Do we need something different from map. Is participatory mapping a viable solution for democratizing viable fields.